Category Archives: Projects

Seven in ten decisions in Parliament happen without a recorded vote

By Ben Fairless | Published: 2026-06-24

Forget what politicians say. What truly matters is what they do, and what they do is vote, to write the laws that affect us all. That idea is why we built They Vote For You: so anyone can look up how their representatives actually vote. But there is a catch we have always lived with. […]

Also posted in OpenAustralia.org, research, They Vote For You | Leave a comment

Become a Fundraising Champion for Civic Tech

By Ben Fairless | Published: 2026-02-17

The OpenAustralia Foundation is a small charity with a big footprint. We build free, open-source tools that help Australians understand what their government is doing and exercise their democratic rights. Our key projects are: These tools are used by thousands of people every week. But keeping them running – and improving them – takes resources […]

Also posted in Announcement, Morph, OpenAustralia Foundation, OpenAustralia.org, PlanningAlerts.org.au, RightToKnow.org.au | Tagged , , | Comments closed

Farewell Election Leaflets

By Ben Fairless | Published: 2025-12-02

Today we’re retiring Election Leaflets, a project that enabled people to upload and search political advertising from around Australia. When we launched it in 2010, online political transparency was thin. People were getting floods of campaign material in their letterboxes but had no simple way to see what was being sent to other voters. Election […]

Also posted in ElectionLeaflets, ElectionLeaflets.org.au | Tagged | Comments closed

Balancing Transparency, Safety and Public Interest on Right to Know

By Ben Fairless | Published: 2025-11-11

In December last year we made a difficult decision to no longer allow people to make requests to the Classification Board or the Classification Review Board for documents related to MA 15+, R 18+, X 18+, or RC content using Right to Know. We did this after careful consideration of the risks such content poses […]

Also posted in RightToKnow.org.au | Tagged , , | 2 Responses

“Strengthening” FOI or sabotaging It? Why we oppose the FOI Amendment Bill 2025

By Ben Fairless | Published: 2025-09-08

The Albanese Government has introduced the Freedom of Information Amendment Bill 2025, presented as a reform to “strengthen” the FOI framework. According to the Attorney-General’s press release, the Bill aims to modernise Freedom of Information (FOI) by: The OpenAustralia Foundation, the charity behind the Right to Know Freedom of Information service, strongly opposes these changes as they will make it harder for […]

Also posted in RightToKnow.org.au, Uncategorized | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Our Submission: Changes to Part 3 of the FOI Guidelines

By Ben Fairless | Published: 2025-06-24

We have made a submission to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC), who were consulting on changes they proposed to make to Part 3 — Processing and deciding FOI requests of their FOI Guidelines. The FOI Guidelines are detail how the Information Commissioner expects authorities to handle FOI requests. We’ve shared our feedback […]

Also posted in RightToKnow.org.au | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Why you can’t request external reviews via Right to Know

By Ben Fairless | Published: 2025-05-29

We’ve recently updated the page for the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, also known as the OAIC, to make it clear people can’t use Right to Know to make FOI review applications. We’ve done this after seeing an increase in the number of external review requests and complaints being made via Right to Know. […]

Also posted in RightToKnow.org.au | Tagged | Leave a comment

Do the teal independents always vote with the Greens?

By Mackay Ash | Published: 2025-04-25

We have been alerted to some political advertising that claims to show that teal independents are voting with the Greens Party over 70% of the time. We cannot say for sure whether this is true or not, and likely no one else can either because that sort of information is not currently recorded anywhere, officially […]

Also posted in They Vote For You | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The increase of Yimbyism on Planning Alerts

By Eiddwen Jeffery | Published: 2025-03-05

Australia’s most recent housing turf war has found its way into the comments section of Planning Alerts. A look into the Yimby movement and its presence on the site. 

In 2024, we observed a new trend on our site. Users supporting individual Development Alerts were commenting not only how a particular application would benefit their local area, but also….

Also posted in PlanningAlerts.org.au, research | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 1 Response

Introducing the biggest Planning Alerts redesign in fourteen years

By Matthew Landauer | Published: 2024-06-25

We originally launched Planning Alerts in October 2009. That feels like a lifetime ago. In that time all sorts of features have been added, there have been visual redesigns, and we’ve introduced many little improvements and fixes. Yet nothing we have done before feels as substantial and meaningful as what we’re launching today.  On the […]

Also posted in Announcement, PlanningAlerts.org.au | 2 Responses